The invention relates to hand-held cleaning tools for cleaning mineral deposits from various surfaces, such as decorative swimming pool tiles, and from other surfaces such as the interiors of toilet bowls, and more specifically to such tools which are driven by remote water powered turbines connected by means of flexible drive cables to hand tools.
Swimming pools typically have water circulation and filtering systems including electrical suction pumps that are driven by electric motors to draw water out of an outlet located near the surface of the swimming pool, to force the water through a filter, and to return the filtered water to the pool. Many swimming pools include a peripheral ring of decorative tile at the water level. If the swimming pool water is "hard" in the sense that it contains substantial amounts of dissolved minerals, mineral deposits inevitably build up on the decorative tile, and are quite unattractive. Removal of such mineral deposits is a difficult and tedious chore. Typically, removal of calcium deposits is accomplished by using commercially available hand-held pumice blocks that are briskly rubbed against the deposits on the tile. Since pumice is much softer than the surface of the tile, it gradually grinds away the mineral deposits but does not scratch the surface of the tile. Ordinarily, one would not use electrically powered equipment, such as a grinding wheel on the drive shaft of a typical electric drill, to remove the above-mentioned calcium deposits from decorative tile. There are several reasons why this is true. For example, there is a danger that the user could be electrically shocked by using an electric tool in contact with water in the swimming pool. Electric hand tools of the type that are commercially available are not capable of providing the high torque, low rpm rotation that would seem to be needed to effectively clean calcium deposits from decorative tile without damaging the surface of the tile. Pumice grinding blocks are also utilized for removing calcium and other mineral deposits in toilet bowls. Again, electrically powered hand tools are obviously not well suited for this task.
There appears to be an unmet need for an inexpensive, yet effective non-electric power tool capable of performing the above described operations of removing calcium and other mineral deposits from surfaces of various water containing vessels, such as swimming pools or toilet bowls, without creating the hazard of electrical shock to the user and without damaging the underlying surface on which the mineral deposits are formed and it is an object of the invention to provide such a power tool.